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PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPIlSrCOTT COMPANY. 

1889. 



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Copyright, 1889, by J. B. Lippincott Company. 




CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 



Columbus, Christopher (a Latinised form of the 
Italian Cristoforo Colombo; the Spanish form, Cristobal 
Colon, corresponds to another Latinisation into Co- 
loniis)^ a great navigator, and the discoverer of the 
New World, was born at or near Genoa, probably in 
1435 or 1436, or, as some writers have stated, in 1446. 
His father, Dominico Colombo, seems to have been a 
wool-comber, and it would appear that in early youth 
his son Christopher worked at the same trade; but he 
spent some time, probably not much, at the university 
of Pavia. When fourteen years old he went to sea. 
The mariners of those days were fighting men, and we 
find notices of the young Columbus in an expedition 
against Naples while in the service of the good King 
Rene, Count of Provence, who, on one occasion, sent 
the young man to Tunis, to cut out a captured galley. 
It is not a little remarkable that on this occasion his 
men, like so many of his later crews, refused to obey 
his orders; and he was obliged, as more than once in 
later years, to deceive them as to his real course. The 
accounts of his early voyages are obscure and of 
doubtful accuracy. About 1470 he was wrecked in a 
sea-fight off Cape St. Vincent, and reached the shores 
of Portugal on a plank. In Lisbon he married the 



4 CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 

daughter of one Perestrello, or Pellestrello, an Italian 
navigator, who had governed Porto Santo, off Madeira, 
for the Portuguese king. On this island Columbus 
resided for some time, making charts for the support 
of his family, and studying the maps and papers left 
by his father-in-law. 

As early as 1474 he had conceived the design of 
reaching India by sailing westward. In 1477, he tells 
us, he 'sailed lOO leagues beyond Thule,' probably to 
or beyond Iceland, where he may have got some 
vague hint of the old Norse adventures on the Ameri- 
can coast. Columbus soon after this began to seek a 
patron for his intended expedition. He applied to the 
senate of Genoa; once or more to King John II. of 
Portugal; later by letters to Henry VII. of England; 
then to the rich and powerful dukes of Medina Sidonia 
and Medina Celi, in Spain, of whom the last named at 
length referred him to Isabella the Catholic, queen of 
Castile. His application to the queen was submitted 
to a body of jurors, most of them ecclesiastics, who re- 
ported adversely to the project of the Genoese mariner. 
Finally, through the intervention of Juan Perez de 
Marchena, a monk who had been the queen's confessor, 
he was brought in contact with their Catholic majesties, 
Ferdinand and Isabella. His plans and demands were 
once more rejected, but afterwards reconsidered ; and 
finally, after seven years of alternate encouragement and 
repulse, his proposals were accepted by the monarchs, 
in the camp of Santa Fe, April 17, 1492. On Friday, 
August 3, 1492, Columbus, now an admiral, set sail from 
the bar of Saltes, an island near Palos, in command of 
the small ship Santa Maria, with 50 men, and attended 



CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. ^ 

by two little caravels, the Pinta and the Nina, the 
whole squadron comprising only 120 adventurers. He 
first made the Canary Islands, whence, on the 6th of 
September, he set sail westward. On the 1 3th a varia- 
tion of the magnetic needle was observed, a circum- 
stance which struck terror into the hearts of his fol- 
lowers. From this and various other causes he found 
it hard to keep up the courage and patience of his 
crews. On Friday, October 12, land was descried. 
There is no doubt that this first landfall, named San 
Salvador by Columbus, was one of the Bahama Islands ; 
and the more general recent opinion would appear to be 
that it was what is now called VVatling's Island ; but 
this is not by any means certain. He then visited 
Cuba and Hayti, which he named Hispaniola or Little 
Spain, and where he planted a small colony of Span- 
iards. He set sail on his return with his two caravels 
(for his flagship had been wrecked), and after an ex- 
ceedingly tempestuous voyage, the Nina alone cast 
anchor in the Tagus. He re-entered the port of Palos, 
March 15, 1493. On the very same day the Pinta 
also, which had parted company from him more than 
a month before, entered the same port, having been 
driven out of her course to Bayonne. The voyagers 
brought back with them some gold, various plants, 
birds, and land animals, and six natives of the West 
Indies. Columbus was received with the highest 
honours by the court, then at Barcelona, and was 
hailed as admiral of the sea and a grandee of Spain. 

He sailed on his second voyage on the 25th of Sep- 
tember, with three carracks and seventeen small cara- 
vels, and on the 3d of November sighted the island 



6 HRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 

of Dominica in the West Indies. His remaining 
career presents one long series of failures, vexations, 
and miseries. After a succession of wretched quarrels 
with his associates, and a long and desperate illness in 
Hispaniola, he returned to Spain much dejected in 
1496. His third voyage, begun in 1498, resulted in 
the discovery of the South American mainland. In 
1499 Columbus and his brother were sent home in 
irons by a newly-appointed royal governor ; but the 
king and queen repudiated this action, and restored 
Columbus to favour. His last great voyage (1502-4), 
along the south side of the Gulf of Mexico, was ac- 
complished in the midst of great hardships and in 
many distresses of body and mind. Spanish jealousy 
of the foreigner and of his well-earned honours 
worked against him on sea no less than at court. 
Columbus died at Valladolid, in Spain, May 20, 1506. 
He was buried at Valladolid ; but in 15 13 his remains 
were translated to Seville, whence in 1536, with those 
of his son Diego, they were removed to Santo Do- 
mingo, in Hispaniola. In 1796 they were, it is stated, 
transferred to the cathedral at Havana ; but there is 
some reason to believe that by mistake it was the 
bones of Diego Colon, and not those of his father, 
which were removed on the last-named occasion. At 
present both Havana and Santo Domingo claim his 
ashes as their treasure. 

A man of ardent impulses and strongly poetical 
imagination, Columbus was hardly the stuff that 
leaders are made of; consequently he failed to control 
the turbulent and adventurous spirits among his fol- 
lowers. Although an honestly and earnestly religious 



CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. j 

and truly conscientious man, he was not seldom guilty 
of acts which subsequently brought him many com- 
punctions of conscience. Irritable and impetuous, he 
was, nevertheless, magnanimous and benevolent. His 
conduct in the capture and sale of slaves, though jus- 
tified by the jurists and divines of the time, was in- 
dignantly condemned by the queen, and can only be 
explained by the desire of Columbus and the crown 
to obtain some revenue from his new discoveries, and 
by the expectation .that while detained in slavery the 
natives might become christianised. 

His brother Bartholomew, who died in Cuba in 
1 5 14, was a man of high character and excellent abili- 
ties, and assisted Columbus effectively in his labours. 
— Another brother, Giacomo (called in Spain Diego), 
who also assisted him in his West Indian government, 
was a man of gentle and pacific disposition, but was no 
match for the turbulent adventurers he attempted to 
control.— Christopher's eldest son, Diego (about 1480- 
1526), was the heir to his honours, merits, and misfor- 
tunes. The great discoverer left also a natural son, 
Don Fernando (1488-15 39), who wrote an important 
Life of his father, preserved only in an Italian trans- 
lation (Venice, 1 571). In 1578 the last legitimate 
descendant of Columbus in the male line died. 

Among the biographies of Columbus the best in 
English are those of Irving (1831), St John (1850), 
Crompton (1859), and Helps (1868). See also The 
Narrative and Critical History of America, edited by 
Winsor, vol. ii. ; Harrisse, Coloinb (Paris, 1884); and 
Varaldo, LOrigine di Cristoforo Colombo (1887). 




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